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Beluga-debate season opens in Nunavik

KRG-organized meeting brings DFO and elders together

ODILE NELSON

The Kativik Regional Government is hailing a recent meeting between Nunavik elders and Department of Fisheries and Oceans scientists as a potential turning point in the ongoing dispute over the federal government’s beluga quotas.

"The DFO has been having quite a few problems getting people to work with the quotas. A lot of people are saying the DFO are wrong about the beluga disappearing," Sammy Tukkiapik, a regional agent for KRG’s renewable resources department, said this week.

"We had one or two people from the Hudson Coast area who didn’t believe, but once they saw everything they said, ‘Now I understand. Now I’ll tell other hunters that they are in decline and I’ll go tell other hunters that they should respect quotas.’"

Tukkiapik organized the Jan. 7 to 8 meeting at the DFO research institute in Mont-Joli, Que. He said the gathering offered DFO marine researchers the chance to clarify the science behind their claims the Eastern Hudson Bay beluga population is dwindling and the Ungava Bay population is endangered.

Their explanations had a significant impact on some of the elders, he said.

"For example, we found out at the meeting how they decide where each beluga comes from in the region. The DFO has always said there are three different stocks in the North and they tell them apart by DNA. It’s very hard to explain to elders how DNA shows where stocks come from. But this is the kind of thing that was explained at the meeting," Tukkiapik said.

Last year, the DFO set a hunting quota of 15 belugas per community after 2001 aerial surveys showed the Eastern Hudson Bay beluga population had dropped to 2000 whales and the Ungava Bay population was less than 200. The DFO also banned whaling in the Ungava Bay and Eastern Hudson Bay regions.

But many Inuit hunters disputed the findings. They said they had seen hundreds of belugas migrating through the Hudson Strait during the spring.

Though the DFO explained these whales included beluga from the healthy Western Hudson Bay population, Nunavimmiut claimed it showed the DFO’s aerial estimations were incorrect. As a result, some individuals and communities defied the federal government and openly exceeded the DFO’s quota.

Mike Hammill, a scientist with the DFO’s marine mammal section, said the meeting gave both scientists and elders ample opportunity to express their respective beliefs.

"The point that we made very clearly ... [was that] 15 years ago there were about 4,000 whales in the Eastern Hudson Bay population. Today there are only about 2,000.... So in some ways we’re missing 2,000 whales. And if you look around in other areas you can’t find these 2,000 whales," Hammill said.

With this point clearly on the table, Hammill said DFO researchers then addressed different suggestions Inuit have made over the years to explain the disappearance.

They opened by presenting a study about the effects of outboard motor noise on beluga migration. Inuit have long maintained that motor noise is driving the beluga away from Nunavik’s coast, making them hard to count.

Hammill told the elders the study supports the idea that beluga in the North are going further offshore when they hear boat motors. But he also suggested to them that this behaviour might not be related to noise alone.

"We said that ‘Yes, beluga in North Quebec react to noise by moving off shore,’ but we also said that it’s probably linked to the idea that every time they hear noise there’s a bullet associated with it and a bad experience," Hammill said. "Because if you go to the St. Lawrence River or you go to Churchill in the Western Hudson Bay [where there is little or no beluga hunting] if the whales hear noise underwater they actually follow the boats."

By meeting’s end, scientists had also argued that noise, disease and killer whale attacks together could not account for the massive population drop, and that aerial surveys and satellite tracking provide accurate measurements of beluga numbers and migration.

The scientists wanted to address the most prominent Inuit claims against the DFO’s findings, Hammill said.

"The Northerners tend to say, ‘Well, the whales have just moved offshore,’ but when you look offshore through aerial surveys you can’t account for 2,000 missing whales. Then people say, ‘Well, they’ve just gone into James Bay or gone into Western Hudson Bay,’ but if you look at the satellite telemetry [tracking] data you see the whales just go offshore and then come in shore. They go back and forth. This, to us, indicates that they aren’t leaving the territory. They’re hanging around during the summer and the reason why we’ve lost 2,000 whales isn’t a problem of migration but that they’ve been shot or killed," Hammill said.

Yet despite the explanations, and the KRG’s perception that the meeting could mark a change in the beluga debate, elders interviewed by Nunatsiaq News this week offered only a cautious endorsement of the scientists finding.

David Oovaut, an elder from Quaqtaq, said the meeting was convincing overall.

"The beluga population looks as though there is no change, but there’s information out there saying there’s less and they [the DFO] sound legitimate," Oovaut said.

Oovaut, however, said he was still not sure all the methods used by the DFO were completely accurate.

"Aerial surveys also show that belugas may be in danger of extinction but as for aerial surveys I am not too sure," Oovaut said.

Davidee Niviaxie, the elder representing Umiujaq, said he felt the DFO and Inuit elders at the meeting continued to misunderstand each other.

"The DFO didn’t really value the Inuit traditional knowledge. We listened to each other but we couldn’t agree on the value of traditional Inuit knowledge. There’s the DFO view, then there’s the hunter’s view. They couldn’t agree."

Yet despite his concerns, Niviaxie said he would join Oovaut and four other elders on a cross-Nunavik tour of the meeting’s results this spring.

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